What communication does al-Qaeda possess? It's been made next to impossible for them to coordinate any sort of meaningful attack (they certainly would have by now) and a lot of the leadership has been killed or captured. I'd argue that over the past 10 years, the same thing has been done, albeit on a smaller scale, because their organization and structure was weak to begin with.

my point was simply that the two organizations' operated in completely different ways, so it is not unreasonable to suggest that the death of the leader would impact those organizations differently. given that one was loose, intermittant, not fixed to location and not always top-down while the other was tightly managed, geographically centred and completely centrally controlled, the leadership bore a different relationship to the organization from one to the other.

for fanatical devotees, a change in leadership is certainly not an assurance that the devotion will dissipate. especially when that change in leadership is viewed as martyrdom.